The Obama administration has spent the past several months in secret
diplomatic negotiations aimed at building a new Syrian opposition
leadership structure that it hopes can win the support of minority
groups still backing President Bashar al-Assad.

The strategy, to be unveiled at a Syrian opposition meeting
next week in Qatar, amounts to a last-ditch effort to prevent extremists
from gaining the upper hand within the opposition and to stop the
Syrian crisis from boiling over into the greater Middle East.

The Post also indicates that defacto "administrative zones" are being set up along the Turkish-Syrian border with "nonlethal" assistance provided by the United States, France and "other like-minded governments." The so-called "Syrian National Council" is being discarded, as it is wholly seen as illegitimate by both Syrians and the world at large.

The SNC, Clinton said, should no longer be considered the “visible leader” of the opposition.

“There
has to be a representation of those who are on the front lines,
fighting and dying today to obtain their freedom,” she said during an
unrelated visit to the Balkan states. “. . . And we also
need an opposition that will be on record strongly resisting the efforts
by extremists to hijack the Syrian revolution.”

It is clear that both the West's political proxies, and its armed militant proxies have been compromised and the narrative that tentatively worked against Libya, is now unraveling and failing against Syria. While the US attempts to portray this latest move as an attempt to "prevent extremist elements from gaining the upper hand within the opposition," it must be remembered that as early as 2007, US officials had admitted that efforts to overthrow the governments of Syria and Iran would include primarily US, Israeli, and Saudi armed extremists drawn from across the Arab World, and sent into Syria to create the very sectarian bloodbath now unfolding. Rhetoric of "freedom" and "democracy" serve merely as cover within which foreign military aggression is couched.

"To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush
Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in
the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with
Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations
that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is
backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations
aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has
been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant
vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda."
-The Redirection, Seymour Hersh (2007)

Hersh's report would continue by stating:

"the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds
and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad,
of Syria. The Israelis believe that putting such pressure on the Assad
government will make it more conciliatory and open to negotiations." -The Redirection, Seymour Hersh (2007)

The link between extremist groups and Saudi funding was also mentioned
in the report, and reflects evidence regarding the origin and backers of similar extremists who flooded Iraq during the US occupation, sowing sectarian strife and killing Western troops alike:

"...[Saudi Arabia's] Bandar and other
Saudis have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close
eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve
created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t
want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.” -The Redirection, Seymour Hersh (2007)

Image: (Left)West Point's Combating Terrorism Center's 2007 report, "Al-Qa'ida's Foreign Fighters in Iraq"
indicated which areas in Syria Al Qaeda fighters filtering into
Iraq came from. The overwhelming majority of them came from Dayr Al-Zawr
in Syria's southeast, Idlib in the north near the Turkish-Syrian
border, and Dar'a in the south near the Jordanian-Syrian border. (Right)
A map indicating the epicenters of violence in Syria indicate that the
exact same hotbeds for Al Qaeda in 2007, now serve as the epicenters of
so-called "pro-democracy fighters."

....

It was exposed in "NATO Using Al Qaeda Rat Lines to Flood Syria With Foreign Terrorists," that indeed, the very networks used by Al Qaeda to flood Iraq with foreign fighters is now being used by the United States, NATO and the Persian Gulf States of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to violently overthrow Syria. The narrative that recent US efforts aim at heading off "extremists" from "hijacking" the armed violence in Syria, is exposed as a blatant lie. Extremists have constituted the so-called "opposition" from the very beginning, by design, with explicit US, NATO, Saudi and Qatari funding, weapons, and support.

Image: The most prominent routes into Syria for foreign
fighters is depicted, with the inset graph describing the most widely
used routes by foreign fighters on their way to Iraq, as determined by
West Point's 2007 Combating Terrorism Center report "Al-Qa'ida's Foreign Fighters in Iraq"
(page 20). These same networks are now being used, with the addition
of a more prominent role for Turkey, to target Syria directly. (Click to
enlarge)